Forgive me Father for I have orgasmed.

The content of this post may be offensive for some. It also may have some triggers for someone who has been sexually abused. Please use caution in reading this post if you are in a fragile place.

The following words are mine. I don’t pretend to state that this is the Ultimate Truth, but it is my truth in the “here & now”, and in my pursuit of living authentically, I will own my voice and my opinions and come clean with where I stand today, with regards to my experience as a victim of sexual abuse as a child, and the ultimate betrayal of my body.

Although raised Catholic, I no longer adhere to any religion. I am a spiritual person who is not religious.

This post is absolutely not grammatically correct!!!

In the last few years, I have “come out” from a few “closets”. I am a healer. I am an Angel Card reader. I am an Intuitive Artist. I am a “rehabilitated” corporate software trainer. I am an ordained Minister. I am pro gay marriage. I am anti-vaccines. The list just goes on and on.

Today’s blog, however, might be one of my biggest “coming out” ever. It frustrates me and annoys me how much it bothers me that the subject of this article bothers me … (if that makes any sense?)

“Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they have done.”

It is no secret that as a young teenage girl, I was sexually abused by my step-father from the tender age of 12 until I left, at the age of 17. I struggled my share of trauma and screw up moments stemming from that period of my life, and over the years, I have adeptly managed to make peace with the abuser, and all other abusers that came after the step-dad.

As a matter of a fact, I have become an expert at forgiving them. Even being grateful for them, for I wouldn’t be who I am today would I have not gone through all that I went through. Furthermore, I can genuinely say that the Divine in me sees the Divine in them, and from that Divinity within all, arises Unconditional Love for them.

For them. The abusers. The betrayers. The offenders. The wrongdoers. The ones in need of redemption. The poor lost souls seeking Love and Light. With my forgiveness, I have delivered them from sin. I have helped them.

It appears that’s where I got stuck along the way. Them. I invested so much time and energy in “them” that the abused little girl’s violation faded away, for the imperative need to forgive “them”.

Somewhere deep and dark within me has been hiding an abandoned teenage girl, cloaked in shame, disgust, guilt, confusion and humiliation. After too many years of uneasy coexistence with the adult-me, she was forced to abdicate and play dead. I categorized her as MIA, and she has a white cross somewhere in the cemetery of my mind.

Except she was never buried. A white cross without a dead body. Imagine that. Except she wasn’t dead. This young girl in me is not dead. She exists. I exist. She is alive and kicking and fucking confused. Are you kidding me? I am 46 and I am confused. How can she not be confused?

When that man violated her for the very first time – she couldn’t make sense of what the heck was happening. Everything within her was screaming “get off me” and yet, this man that she had learned to trust and love, was doing things to her that her young teenage body was reacting to. She instantly felt shame and disgust and escaped his perverted hands for a moment. He quickly went at it again, and to this day, I can still hear his repulsive voice: “Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. Look at how wet you are.” What the hell is going on. I am wet. I am gross. He is gross. This is gross. Leave me alone. Run away. Run, run Janick. But I didn’t run. I froze. I let him do whatever he wanted with me, to me, over me. I learned very quickly to keep quiet. To play roles. To dissociate from my body. From this body that was clearly dishonoring me. Betraying me.

Something was surely wrong with me for my body responded to his sickening sexual stimuli. If my body responded, I must have wanted it. But how could I want this? What was wrong with me? Yes. What was wrong with me for enduring this abuse on a daily basis for the next five years. I am now learning that nothing was wrong with me. The body responds to stimuli.

“Human beings are born into the world wired to respond to sexual contact. Baby boys often get erections during a diaper change, even without any unnecessary contact involved in the cleaning process. Young children frequently touch their “private” areas, not to achieve orgasm like post-pubescent people do but just because it feels good.

When a child’s body is stimulated through sexual contact, it will sometimes react to that stimulation by having an orgasm. This does not mean that the sexual contact was welcome.

The child’s reaction to having a “good” feeling in the midst of bad feelings can be very confusing to the child. The child does not feel the same sense of pleasure and relaxation afterward as an adult does after consensual sex. Instead, the child is left with conflicting emotions. Some people wind up hating their own bodies for betraying them by reacting to sexual abuse with an orgasm.”

– source: Orgasm during Rape or Other Form of Sexual Abuse, May 8, 2008 by faithallen, https://faithallen.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/orgasm-during-rape-or-other-form-of-sexual-abuse/

I feel for me. I feel for my 12-year old teenage self. For my 15-year old. For my 17-year old. I feel sadness. I feel grief. I feel pain. I feel anger. I feel rage. I feel tenderness and love. I want to run to her and grab her and tell her: There’s nothing wrong with you. It wasn’t your fault. I know you didn’t want this. I know you were lost and confused. You are not a disgrace. You are not a reject. You are not crazy. You don’t have the plague.

After all, I have forgiven him. Along with everyone else. My parents, my neighbors, my teachers, my schoolmates, society. “Forgive them, Father.” Janick, you get an “A+” on forgiving others.

Now how about forgiving yourself? How about forgiving myself? How about forgiving me. Yes, how about that.

I feel like one of those matryoshka dolls. You know those wooden Russian nesting dolls, decreasing in size and placed one inside the other? I feel like I deliberately removed the version representing my teenage self, all along pretending she was not missing and that I remained whole.

Yes, I am fully capable of loving myself even if a part of me is missing. For when I look at my matryoshka doll from the outside, I seem complete. Nonetheless, a part of me is missing, and today, on this Easter Sunday, I am bringing back my little girl. I am honoring her. I am “coming out” and letting the world know the unspeakable: My body orgasmed under the hands of my abuser. No, I didn’t want it. Despite what many thought, and said. Despite what I thought and felt.

I find it interesting that for the last few years, I’ve been struggling intensely with “being seen”, mostly with my career, but also in my personal life, with friends, contacts, loved ones. I failed to realise that until I embrace ALL of me, until I am willing to see, hear, feel ALL of me, I wasn’t enabling me to be seen at all.

A few weeks ago, I uncovered a short but life-altering moment that happened when I was in college, almost 30 years ago. Someone who I thought was a girl-friend (I didn’t know what a “friend” was), told me one sentence that impacted me beyond words in a very insidious way. I had my first crush. This guy was awesome. Gorgeous. Bright. Kind. Funny. Independent. My oh my I was falling hard for him. I talked about him constantly, until that dreadful moment that affirmed how odious I had been all those years. How disgusting I was. How much of a plague I was.

That friend casually blurted out to me: “Get over him, Janick. He will never go out with you. No one will ever go out with you. No one will ever kiss you or touch you. Everyone knows what you did in high school. You slept with your step-dad. That is disgusting.”

“Forgive her. She doesn’t know what she is saying.”
I have been all alone for many, many years. Even in a crowd full of people, I’ve felt alone.

Later on in life, I have made a few friends. I even found a man who says he loves me. After 13 years, he still loves me. Shows me he loves me. Yet, I have often heard myself say “That’s because you don’t really know me. If you’d really know me, you wouldn’t love me. You would leave me.” My friends and husband and children have often been shocked with that statement, asking me why was I saying that, what did I mean. I was clueless. I always found myself speechless and without a logical explanation. I just had this strong urge to let them know that they didn’t really know me.

Now I know. I’ve found the explanation and the words. I didn’t want them to know how ashamed I was for having had orgasms from sexual intercourse with my step-dad. I didn’t want them to know how disgusting I had been. How disgusting and filthy I felt from 5 years of daily sexual abuse.

Being a good, forgiving person doesn’t mean that I have to forget the hurt that I’ve been through. I didn’t deserve any of it. It was wrong. I was violated in one of the worst way a woman, a young girl can be violated.

My body is sacred. My temple. My sanctuary. It was sullied and dishonored.

Sadly, in the process, it looks like I abandoned myself too. By silencing the teenage girl in pain, covered in shame.

Today, I come clean. This is me. All of me. I am willing to be seen. I am speaking the unspeakable. No more shame. No more taboo. I embrace my teenager-self. I love her. I embrace her. I tell her there’s nothing to forgive her – she hasn’t done anything wrong. Today, I take her in my arms and comfort her. I let her cry. I dry her tears with love and compassion and tenderness. Today, she is born again. Today, I am born again.

Leave if you must. I don’t care. I won’t feel abandoned or rejected, for I now have myself, I am here for me. I may have abandoned her before, today, I stand tall and strong and whole.

I exist. I am worthy. I am Divine. My body might have been violated, but I am not a violation of life. My body, my sanctuary might have been sullied before, but I am crying for it them, allowing my tears to cleanse it, carrying away the shame and guilt and replenishing it with love, care, and tenderness.

I am Janick Lemieux. I own my past. You can see me. Here I am am. Soul-Naked. Authentic. Worthy. Alive and kicking.

For all of you who may, as a victim of sexual abuse, have felt disgust, shame, guilt, humiliation, and the list goes on, I want to reach out to your forgotten inner child and take them in my arms with love and care and attention and respect, and honor… You are normal. It wasn’t your fault. You are worthy of Love. You don’t need to suffer alone.

Let’s remember the children of abuse. Let’s remember their pain and their wars.

Comments: 4

What an amazing article. Janick, this is so authentic and empowering! I applaud you for your coming out. It took me 40-some years to fully accept and love unconditionally the mentally-abused little girl that was inside me and who went on to make horrible choices in life. My Soul Sister! No wonder I love you so much already! XOXO